A few weeks ago a new entrance was added to the Stadium Village Westbound platform. Now instead of accessing it from either end, you can also access the middle of the platform. I'm not really sure what the point is, but it saves me 10 or 15 seconds when I leave work now.

My westbound, afternoon trip home from work seems to be getting busier and busier this summer. Today there were 10-15 people standing in all three of the cars. The east end of the line seems to be holding its own pretty well on ridership.

Just had a super-annoying pedestrian experience at 5th and Cedar. I was at the NE corner waiting for the green light on Cedar to go red. An east-bound train pulled up and got the signal when Cedar went red. As it should. The train pulled through and then the Green went back to Cedar. Annoying, but whatever, I waited. Then a west-bound train arrived at the Central station. It got the next light phase as it should. By this point people were walking/running across the tracks in front of the west-bound train to the point that the operator blew the horn and probably reduced acceleration.

After the train went through Cedar got the green AGAIN. That's ridiculous. Apparently the signal resets itself after each LRT cycle.

C'mon, in my day this was sophomore-level digital logic design. It's probably freshman- or high-school-level now. It's super simple to just remember the phase of the signal before the LRT crosses and then resume at the next state once the train passes.

I've always figured that markings would be helpful even if they weren't exactly aligned.

You really want people to be standing a bit off to the side of the doors or a few feet back so that people can get off the train first and then have new riders get on. I think it would be better to use some paint for this, but maybe this will work alright too. Will people consider it part of the "yellow area" and stand back, or will the use it as a target to stand on? Probably both will happen, at least for a while.

But I thought they couldn't do door markers, since the Type I and Type II LRVs have different door locations? Or does that not matter, since the Green Line uses only Type IIs?

I don't think it will be a problem on the Green Line since it is all Type II. It will be interesting to see how they handle these on the Blue Line.

mulad wrote:I've always figured that markings would be helpful even if they weren't exactly aligned.

You really want people to be standing a bit off to the side of the doors or a few feet back so that people can get off the train first and then have new riders get on. I think it would be better to use some paint for this, but maybe this will work alright too. Will people consider it part of the "yellow area" and stand back, or will the use it as a target to stand on? Probably both will happen, at least for a while.

Part of the reason these are being installed is so people who are blind can more easily find the doors. Having paint would not help them very much.

But I agree that this could pose a circulation problem. And if people stand on them, they'll be less useful for people who can't see them.

Can't get my photo to attach to this post....but snapped a pick a couple weeks ago of a 3-car train consisting of 2 Siemens Type II cars and one Bombardier Type I car. I'm assuming there must have been some sort of malfunction, and the Bombardier had to be towed.